Colleen Hroncich
The Center for Creative Education in West Palm Beach, Florida, opened in 1994. But according to CEO Bob Hamon, in some ways the organization is just four years old because “we have a new version of ourselves post COVID.”
The Center’s original mission was to support public schools, which it did through after-school programming and arts integration projects at local schools. “They had good success. I think they were very memorable for the kids who were involved,” Bob says. But it was hard to get local districts to commit long-term, and CCE didn’t know if its efforts were making a difference.
In 2019, CCE hired the DeVos Institute to evaluate its operations and create a five-year strategic plan. “They made it very clear that we can continue to beat our heads against the wall of the school district, but we’re never going to have the kind of partnership that will allow us to understand the value of the work that we’re doing. So they recommended that we commit to starting a school,” Bob explains. The board signed off on the plan in December 2019. Initially, they planned to create a charter school. Bob met with school district leaders in early 2020 and says they were actually supportive since they knew CCE and had worked with them for 20+ years.
Then COVID-19 hit, and everything changed. “The bulk of the work that we did was either in the schools, in the school district, or all over the county, where we are still the largest provider of after-school programming through Children Services Council,” says Bob. “Everywhere we worked closed. So we’re like, ‘Okay, what are we going to do?’”
In his previous career, Bob ran infection control for a large medical center for 14 years, so he knew he could figure out how to operate a school safely. On June 1, 2020, CCE opened a summer school program so low-income parents in the community would have a safe place for their children while they went back to work. They focused on reading using a variety of creative activities. “We averaged about a 50 percent gain in reading skills,” says Bob. “When they decided not to open the schools, I called the school district and said, ‘Look, we’re willing to share everything that we’ve learned all summer long. We’ve not had any sick kids. I’ve not had a sick teacher. I’ve not had a sick staff member.’”
CCE wanted to continue to support local families during school closures. “We called ourselves a learning lab, and we admitted 60 kids” who were doing remote school with various local districts, Bob explains. There was no charge to the families.
Trying to support kids from multiple districts was a challenge since they had different schedules, platforms, and curricula. Tom googled “How do you start a private school in the state of Florida?” from his home office one Saturday. “I came to work Monday morning and said, ‘Guess what? We’re going to be a private school,” he recalls. “Between the middle of September and the end of December, we jumped through all the hoops.” The Foundations School, so named to emphasize the importance of laying an early foundation, opened its doors in January 2021.
The Foundations School intentionally serves students from Palm Beach County’s most challenged ZIP codes. “Ninety-six percent of my kids qualify for free and reduced lunch. We’re a Title One school in everything except name, because we’re not a public school,” Bob explains. Thanks to Florida’s scholarship programs and outside fundraising, parents pay an average of around $350 a year per student to attend the school.
There are four fundamental principles that Bob thinks set The Foundations School apart.
- Commitment to Grade-Level Performance. Unlike systems that promote struggling students, Bob says, “We want to know in kindergarten how many are ready to go to first? In first, how many are ready to go to second? In second, how many are ready to go to third? And we do that all the way through the fifth grade.” This commitment produces remarkable results: “Eighty-nine percent of our third graders this past year were reading at grade level. The eight schools that we recruit from, I think they were at 32 percent.”
- Treating Teachers as Professionals. We are very committed to our teachers. I meet with them; our head of school meets with them. We ask them what they need. We believe in having reading, math, and language specialists. Not because we want to teach it as a separate subject, but we want to make certain that our teachers have the skills that they need to confidently teach that material.
- Curriculum Consistency. Rather than constant changes that “create angst,” the school maintains a stable curriculum that is logical and builds knowledge. “We shouldn’t throw the books up in the air every three years and start all over,” says Bob.
- Family Engagement. Recognizing that success requires family involvement, the school provides comprehensive support, including adult literacy programs, social services coordination, and extensive family engagement activities.
At The Foundations School, they have an individual learning plan for every student (although they don’t call it that because of negative connotations). Core classes are scheduled in blocks so students can move around to the level that meets their needs and abilities. They also hold students back if needed in the early grades, rather than waiting until third grade, as many schools do, by which time the students may be really struggling.
In addition to The Foundations School, CCE continues to offer after-school programming that includes arts integration through its Karakul-Held Academy. It also runs Blue Planet Global Education, which connects local kids to kids around the world.
While CCE’s approach has broadened, systemic change within the public school system remains part of the mission. “Our goal is to force public schools through data to believe that there’s a better way to do this,” Bob explains. “We don’t intend to build more Foundation Schools. We want to use the work that we’re doing here to help underperforming schools in our community and anywhere else for who’s interested in what we’re doing.”